Cary Murnion and Jonathan Milott Talk Cooties
Drew Tinnin
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You won’t catch Cooties (review) until September 18, but horror fans here at the Stanley Film Festival in Estes Park, Colorado, were fortunate enough get a sneak peek opening night to see just how darkly funny Leigh Whannell’s (Saw, Insidious) script is and how many kids actually die in horrifically entertaining ways.
Coming off their buzzed about short film, Boob, the directing team of Cary Murnion and Jonathan Milott sat down with us in the Library Room just down from the infamous Stanley Hotel. Cooties and their next project both sound like ones to definitely keep an eye out for.
DC: Have you guys had any ghost experiences at the hotel yet?
CM: Someone told a friend of ours that if you put an orange in your room, it’s supposed to move. So we got an orange, and it didn’t.
DC: Must have been in the wrong room.
JM: You hear lots of things, and I think if you’re tired or something, you could be like, ‘What is that?’ That would be my more practical reasoning for it. But I could definitely see where that could creep you out.
DC: How did the screening go last night? Did you guys get a good crowd reaction?
CM: It was awesome. The good thing about this kind of movie is you can really, because it’s a comedy and a horror comedy, you can really tell what the audience is thinking. If they laugh and if they gasp, then you’ve succeeded, and last night it was all laughing and gasping.
DC: I know this isn’t coming out until September; is this the final cut of the film?
CM: This will be it. I think the only thing would be like a sound or color [correction], but the cut should be done.
JM: There’s a few dark moments that we noticed here.
CM: Dark because of the color, not dark because of the tone. But in terms of the edit, it’s done.
DC: So, what is the premise for Cooties, and why was this a good fit for the two of you guys to come on board?
CM: Well, the way we came on to this film is that we did a short film called Boob that’s about a boob that comes alive and terrorizes a hospital and everyone tries to escape. All these horror movies, everything comes alive and we’d never seen one about a boob that comes alive. We did that short film and that got around and the guys from Cooties were looking for directors. This is a film that has what we feel is some very strong comedy and very strong horror, and that’s rare in films. At least, we think that it is. The premise of this is that we follow Clint, who’s played by Elijah [Wood], a substitute teacher that comes into his old school that he went to. It starts off as a normal day, and gradually the kids turn into monsters and the teachers have to survive. We treated it like it’s this fantastical premise but try to keep things grounded as much as we can. If you don’t have fun with it, you’re not really going with the audience.
JM: In a way, we push as hard as we can to make it as grounded as possible because it’s so crazy. Because if you just go with the craziness, it’s just ridiculous. So silly. I think one of the things we did with Boob and, hopefully, what we did with this is a lot of times comedy isn’t known for the filmmaking and the cinematography; whereas, with a lot of the horror movies, the technical aspects and the way it looks is more important. So that’s something we did with Boob and tried to bring it here.
CM: We had a real definitive way of how we wanted this thing to look. It all takes place in one day so the tone of the film changes as the day changes. It starts out bright and sunny and it’s kind of a bright and sunny film and, then, as it gets to afternoon, things get a little darker. In the nighttime that’s when things really get dark and scary, so we used that day as part of the script in our visual sense and to actually get the tone of the film and to help the audience go with you on that.
DC: What do you guys think are some of the horror comedies that do walk the line? You’re right; there aren’t many that are true horror comedies.
CM: The one that I think is the closest is Shaun of the Dead. It’s not as scary as Cooties, but there are some real dramatic moments so I think that’s one of the closer ones. It’s very funny, which I think Cooties has as well.
JM: And that’s I think another good example; he’s using cinematic tools to tell that comedy versus some that are just completely going headshot, headshot, headshot. But there really isn’t that many.
CM: Our big one, it’s an older one, but Gremlins is one that is kind of silly and funny and is also pretty dark. When they change into gremlins, people are really getting killed, so that one to us was one that influenced us a lot. Also, we have a character named Patriot who is kind of our Spike in terms of he leads everyone and he’s the smart one. He’s our Spike.
DC: Do you think kids should watch Cooties?
CM: No, it’s rated R. There’s some big violence and some language in there, but for a reason. If you’re going to have a movie about kids who are monsters and really go to the audience we want to go to, we can’t pull back.
JM: The saddest part is I was away for six months making this movie and my kid was five or six at the time and said, ‘Daddy when can I see your movie?’ Not for another 13 years maybe.
DC: Did you guys want to shoot anything that you weren’t able to do?
CM: We always wanted to make sure we pushed it. The producers even thought this was more of a darker movie from the very beginning, and us and the cast kind of made it a little more of a comedy. There was no one thing that we didn’t do. We didn’t want to gross people out just to gross people out; we wanted to use it in certain ways.
JM: There’s a pivotal moment where one of the teachers has to kill a kid for the first time, and that’s something we shot in a lot of different ways but knowing we were going to edit in a very specific way where you don’t necessarily show the impact and things like that.
DC: What’s next for you guys? Do you want to stay in the horror genre?
CM: We have an action film that we’re gonna do with the guys at XYZ who produced the Raid films. It’s set in Brooklyn. The premise is Texas wants to secede from the United States and they hire their own little army and they invade New York City to force this to happen. So we are following a girl home five blocks as she tries to figure out what’s going on and survive this kind of modern day Civil War.
JM: It’s not horror at all, but there’s definitely some gore in it and blood and some dismemberment and things.
CM: Jane Levy from “Suburgatory” and the new Evil Dead is attached to it, and we’re just trying to figure out the last bit of casting. We’re supposed to shoot that in June or July of this year.
From the twisted minds of Leigh Whannell (co-creator of Saw and Insidious) and Ian Brennan (co-creator of “Glee”), Cooties is a horror comedy with unexpected laughs and unapologetic thrills. Cooties will be one of the debut releases of the newly-launched Lionsgate Premiere label, which will release the film on September 18th in select theaters and On Demand.
SpectreVision and Glacier Films present Cooties, starring Elijah Wood, Rainn Wilson, Alison Pill, Jack McBrayer, Leigh Whannell, Nasim Pedrad, Ian Brennan, and Jorgé Garcia. The film is directed by Jonathan Milott and Cary Murnion from a screenplay by Leigh Whannell and Ian Brennan. Daniel Noah, Josh C. Waller, and Elijah Wood produce along with Tove Christensen, Georgy Malkov, and Steven Schneider. Ian Brennan, Leigh Whannell, Gevond Andreasyan, Sarik Andreasyan, Hayden Christensen, Seth William Meier, and Vladmir Poliakov serve as executive producers.
Synopsis:
When a cafeteria food virus turns elementary school children into killer zombies, a group of misfit teachers must band together to escape the playground carnage. The film stars Elijah Wood (The Hobbit, Lord of the Rings), Rainn Wilson (“The Office”), and Alison Pill (“The Newsroom”) as teachers who fight to survive the mayhem while hilariously bickering in an uncomfortable love triangle on the worst Monday of their lives.
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